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When Sharon Lynn Deem (biology '85; DVM '88) and her fellow researchers set up camp on the vast steppes of eastern Mongolia, it seemed they had found the perfect spot to conduct their study. The purpose of their project, sponsored by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), was to provide local officials with health

For the first few days, everything went smoothly. They located several herds and successfully examined about 50 calves. But trouble began on the fourth night, when lightning struck the plains.

At first they had nothing to contend with but a small brush fire, and they tried to douse the flames. But after three hours of racing to contain the fire as it rapidly spread, they knew they were in danger.

"For the next few days, it was like in the old Westernswe moved around to the back side of the fire when it was moving one way. Then we burnt a circle around us as a fire break. We had this little oasis of green, and around us were hundreds of kilometers of charred grasslands," says Deem. When they walked over the scorched landscape a few days later, she recalls, it was littered with the burnt remains of mice, gazelle, and other small animals.

Despite this and other major setbacks, the WCS team collected enough information to assess the health-related impacts of interactions between the gazelle population and local herds of sheep and goats.

As one of three veterinarians with the WCS Field Veterinary Program, Deem doesn't always face such dire conditions in the field, but she does encounter her share of hardships. Since joining the program in 1998, she has persevered through political unrest, language barriers, bumpy plane rides, and living in a tent for weeks at a time. She has stumbled upon an anaconda, been charged by a silver-backed gorilla, hunted through "impenetrable thorn-bush and an abundance of ticks" to track down a tapir in Bolivia, and hiked more than 300 kilometers through record-breaking rainfall to immobilize an elephant in the Congo.

Yet none of this overshadows the rewards. Her field reports read like excerpts from National Geographic Magazine. She travels throughout Asia, Africa, and Central and South America, seeing places most people only dream of visiting. She works regularly with a whole range of rare, exotic, and endangered species, from blue-fronted Amazon parrots to green sea turtles. And she contributes directly to conservation and health initiatives on an international scale.

"It can be difficult," Deem says, "but it can be beautiful." And she's not talking about pretty sunsets. To her, beauty means coming face-to-face with an animal in the wild, on its own termsa troop of gorillas in an African rain forest or the maned wolf she spent days tracking in Bolivia. "There are times when I've been waiting for days in a blind for one little animal, and I wonder why I got so much education to sit there being bitten by mosquitoes, and it's awful!" she laughs. "But then, when she finally shows up, and here is this animal in front of youit's just so different than working in a zoo. Because it's their world, and you're just there trying to learn about it to keep it intact."

Working to preserve areas of the natural world despite rapid international development, the Field Veterinary Program seeks that precarious balance between the needs of humans and animals. Areas where human, wildlife, and domesticated animal populations overlap, such as the edges of national parks, demand particular attention because the diseases that pass among these three populations threaten both people and animals. This is where Deem does much of her work.

In the Gran Chaco region of Bolivia, for example, Deem has worked extensively with the Gurañi Indians who live and hunt on the outskirts of the Kaa-Iya National Park. Her contributions to the region include long-term health evaluations of tapir, armadillo, brocket deer, and several other species; analysis of the effects of wildlife/cattle interaction in the area; and medical training for the scientists and local veterinarians working on this project.

She has helped educate the Gurañi Indians about incorporating sustainable use, a concept that is sometimes the most practical approach to global conservation. "The Gurañi Indians have hunted and lived off these animals for hundreds and hundreds of years. We're not saying, 'You've got to stop hunting, we want to preserve everything.' We want to preserve species, even if that requires some animals being killed at a level that ensures the survival of the local people."

Because the Gurañi have been shown that their survival depends upon change, they have willingly adapted sustainable use practices despite centuries of tradition. They have learned how to care for their domestic parrots in order to protect the free-ranging parrot population, for example, and how to monitor brocket deer health to maintain adequate numbers for hunting. "When we point out that it's a different world than it was a few hundred years ago, and we need to work in the context of what it is now, people are receptive to that," the Tech alumna says.

Deem's interest in conservation began during her days in Tech's Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine. As a vet student, she spent two summers working on

projects in Africa, the first in Kenya, where she took a wildlife management course, and the second in Zimbabwe. Deem received funding for the Zimbabwe project from the U.S. Agency for International Development to conduct both a gender-related study on women's role with livestock and a veterinary study on a disease called heartwater. Several years later, she returned to Zimbabwe to study the epidemiology of heartwater while earning her Ph.D. through the University of Florida.

Her focus on worldwide conservation made her a natural fit for the WCS. Although there were no openings in the Field Veterinary Program when she finished her zoo and wildlife residency at the University of Florida, she joined WCS as a clinician. Based at the Bronx Zoo/Wildlife Conservation Park, WCS also runs the New York Aquarium and three other wildlife centers located around the city. As a WCS clinician, Deem contributed to the care of about 10,000 animals, including nearly 1,500 species of fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals. Today, when she's not traveling, she still conducts her research from WCS headquarters at the Bronx Zoo, also the location of the Wildlife Health Center, a premier medical and research facility.

At the heart of Deem's accomplishments is just thatheart. Her love of animals comes through in her voice when she talks about her work. Leaving her own cats in the care of friends while she travels concerns her more than any hardship in the field. And she says she cried the first three times she watched an educational video WCS developed as part of the Bronx Zoo's new Congo Gorilla Forest. After a graphic depiction of the violent effects of deforestation and bushmeat trading in the Congo, the video screen rises to reveal the park's gorilla population enjoying their new rain forest environment behind a floor-to-ceiling wall of glass.

Deem assumes she will eventually settle down to a quieter lifestyle, but presently world travel suits her just fine. "I really believe in what I'm doing right now. Will I be traveling like this in five years? Who knows? But I want to stay involved in conservation."